Article by Ms Slide, first published in 2010 in Desire Presents BDSM Magazine and dug up from the archive in response to (and in partial agreement with) points made in a blog post today on MaxKeiser.com:

Power Subs: When the Hammer is the Anvil

“I sincerely want to be your slave,” the Galician Squire beseeches, throwing himself at the woman’s feet. “I want your sway over me to be consecrated by law, my life to be in your hands, so that nothing in the world can protect or defend me against you.”

These are the words of Severin, the landed nobleman of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella, “Venus in Furs”. This was the book that, nearly two decades later, led German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing to coin the term “Masochism”. Contrary to modern interpretations, its original definition was not focused on any enjoyment of physical pain or suffering for its own sake. Krafft-Ebing’s Masochists, like the fictional Severin, were those who had the urge to relinquish control and allow themselves to be dominated by another.

At long last, Sacher-Masoch’s erotic masterpiece gave a voice to those intelligent, articulate and – despite what shouty idiots who read the Daily Mail may say – perfectly sane human beings; those courageous folk who would gladly lay down their own power at the feet of someone they desire.

“I think I’m quite similar to the characters Sacher-Masoch describes in his books,” says Derek Possede who runs Club Pedestal, a bi-monthly Femdom event in London, and the website WomanWorship.co.uk. “But his name has come to mean something very different from what he wrote about, which just goes to show how meaningless these labels are.”

As a man of wealth and social standing, Masoch’s protagonist seeks to renounce the trappings and obvious advantages of his comfortable lifestyle, favouring humble servitude and devotion to Wanda, his beloved Mistress. Through this voluntary role-reversal, could Severin be defined as a “power sub”? Does such a thing really exist? Or are the labels we put on sexual preference and social status as redundant as Derek suggests?

The story of the “power sub” is one we have all heard, whether in literature, whispered gossip, or emblazoned in salacious block-capitals across the front of tabloid newspapers. Power is a slippery concept. Do those who feel they have too much of it secretly want to set it aside, even just for an hour or two? Is there always such a stark contrast between a person’s every-day life and the life they lead in role-play fantasies? Is sexual submission really a peccadillo reserved only for the powerful?

This has become something of a BDSM trope. Popular culture has long been penetrated by the idea that a large proportion of those who control politics, the stock market and the jobs and lives of thousands are secret “power subs”. When I tell people I work as a Dominatrix, the assumption is that I have a cellar full of bankers, company directors, oligarchs and cabinet ministers, all chained to walls and tied to crosses like a Who’s Who of the global Illuminati.

And of course this idea, although misleading and inaccurate, is not as unrealistic as it may sound. Most Pro-Dommes do have more than a smattering of these so-called “power subs” among their ranks. During the last stint of Conservative rule, the infamous Miss Whiplash – aka Lindi St Claire – revealed that her client base included 252 members of parliament. It later emerged that she had also been renting Norman Lamont’s basement flat (not, as you might think, a euphemism) during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

There has long been a popularly perceived correlation between conservatism, in all its forms, and the later revelation of unconventional sexual practices. It is often suggested that an equally conservative upbringing plays a part in this – the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne often attributed his own proclivities to Eton’s “birching”. Yet despite social conditioning, self-appointed moral guardians tend, inevitably, to fall foul of their own heteronormative, missionary-position, man-on-top dogma. The more rigid the rules, the more spectacularly they are revealed to be broken by their own advocates.

When there is political pressure to be a figurehead of (traditionally masculine) strength, righteousness and wholesome “family values”, sexual submission or humiliation of any kind is strictly taboo. This taboo is frequently breached, and in the most public of ways. A beautiful example is that of the countless scandals plaguing North America’s Religious Right. The most outspoken homophobes in US politics have a propensity to find themselves arrested for sexual misdemeanours with male prostitutes and undercover cops (Ranker.com has a comprehensive and steadily growing list of anti-gay activists caught in acts of marvellous knob-gobbling, cheek-spreading, spunky-faced hypocrisy).

Yet is it really that these denizens of power and public morality are more inclined to submit in secret than their quieter – and more liberally minded – counterparts? Or do we just find out about the exotic adventures of those who openly stand for vanilla values because such contrasts are so very newsworthy?

In 2008, Max Mosley was caught by a News of the World sting. As President of the FIA (the governing body for international motorsports) and son of right-wing political figures Sir Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford, Max Mosley was no stranger to power, wealth and controversy. He was said to have had a “NAZI ORGY” with “HOOKERS”. Actually, it emerged later in court that there was no Nazi theme, no orgy and no hookers. Mosley participated in a safe, sane and consensual BDSM scene with fellow enthusiasts, including Pro-Dommes and switches, a beautiful biochemist and, unfortunately, the daft, duplicitous wife of an MI5 officer (now trading as “Mistress Kiera of Milton Keynes”) who was wired up with hidden recording equipment and sold the footage to the News of the World… but still, absolutely no prostitutes. Afterwards, they all sat down and had a nice cup of tea.

“You can’t change how you are,” Mosley defiantly declared, when asked by the Guardian’s Angelique Chrisafis if he would turn his back on BDSM. “You will never completely lose interest in that sort of thing. You just don’t, to be very honest.”

It would be easy to stereotype Mosley as a “power sub”. With his upper-class background, wealth and social status (and the fact he once ran as a Conservative MP!) he would fit the perceived role perfectly. Yet there is a glitch. On that fateful day in the Chelsea dungeon, Mosley switched. He played both spanker and spankee. Could it be that things are more complicated than a simple binary of “top” or “bottom”?

It seems that the role-reversal theory of contrasting double-lives may be a myth. As a Pro-Domme it would be easy to have a skewed idea of what kind of people submit. Paid sessions are affordable to those with a more-than-comfortable income, so it’s inevitable that a Pro-Domme’s most frequent visitors would be wealthy. People in the public eye, or those with a politically-sensitive career or connections, visit professionals for reasons of privacy. Unfortunately, to date or socialise within the mainstream BDSM scene would attract the unwanted attentions of the gutter press for some and, Mistress Kiera excepted, we Pro-Dommes are famed for our discretion.

‘Jack’ is one such man. As someone in the higher echelons of the entertainment industry, his public and private lives remain separate: “I suppose I am highly opinionated and many women are attracted to this powerful and strong man,” he says. “Indeed I am that man, but also another.”

The closest Jack’s two worlds came to colliding was during an affair with an actress who was working for him. “The relationship had power-tensions because of the nature of our working roles. I could play out a sort of submissive role secretly within my head. What I really liked was the flipping of power and the tensions within that… She was a television star and therefore high status. Of course, she liked my high status, so within the relationship I lived it submissively. I suspect, so did she.”

He is rarely open about his own desires and, as a result, often inadvertently ends up in the sexually dominant role. “Almost every woman I have been with has, in effect, said ‘spank me’. My real-world persona attracts women who want an opinionated alpha male. That is how I present. Indeed, in the business world it’s what I am and so that’s what they want in the bedroom. I have lived a fantasy life – much internalised.”

So what is power? Is authority in sexual and social situations really so different, and exactly who has it? Are we all looking for that levelling influence or is it more complex than that?

‘Olivia’ is a university lecturer who finds strength in her own submission. “Letting go of the enormous pressure that power and success often cause, for an hour or two, can be both a release and a way of proving to one’s self that the pressure is manageable. When playing a sexually submissive role I get to cry, to whimper, and most importantly abandon myself. I no longer have to worry about the image I present to the world or fear that my vulnerability will bring disapproval. In this world my vulnerability is cherished; it’s a sign of strength not weakness.”

So, is sexual submission itself just another type of power? Viewers of CSI may remember the 2003 episode “Lady Heather’s Box” where, as a result of the strict safe-word protocol at the chamber of Pro-Domination, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) decides that “in here, the submissive has the power”.

“The degree to which I am a powerful figure in my job is such a wonderfully humorous counterpoint to my other activities,” Olivia admits with a smile. “There is both an explicit structure and an implicit social value granted to my job that makes me powerful and respected. I rarely think of myself that way but I can’t deny that it is the way I conduct myself and the way others perceive me. I have a natural reserve, it’s born of insecurity and uncertainty but, all my life, others have interpreted it as a sense of superiority.”

It is clear that much of the psychosexual dogma and received opinion we are fed through the media, message boards and conventional porn is flawed. It now seems that simple definitions of “top” or “bottom” are too crude to label someone’s individual kink or, even worse, status in wider society with.

Derek of Club Pedestal agrees wholeheartedly. “Words like dominance and submission, and alpha/beta people, are okay for describing baboons,” he says, “but not much good for describing the complexities of human behaviour. Submission isn’t really what’s going on in my mind, its an awful word, and putting `alpha` or `power` in front of it, is a indication of how crap the word is, and inaccurate.”

As someone who organises the largest Femdom event in the world, does Derek see himself as someone with power or authority? “Absolutely not. If you serve women as they wish, people keep turning up. Its the women who have the power.”

There is nothing here of the double-life that so-called “power subs” are perceived to have. His frank honesty tells us all that sexuality and social status should never be judged in such simplistic terms, and it is clear that we can all learn something from his conclusion: “I’m proud of how I see women, I’m not ashamed of how I feel, so don’t need to switch my attitude on or off, depending on what I’m doing. That’s why I don’t label myself with words that might require me to have multiple personalities and never be myself.”

Returning to “Venus in Furs”, we find the fictional Severin as a changed man at the end of his story. After being abandoned by his cuckolding Mistress, he lives a quiet and eccentric existence, shunned by his neighbours, and takes on a dominant, despotic role with the peasant girls now in his employ.

“Women have to be broken in like this,” he declares bitterly. “Never is Goethe’s phrase, ‘You must be either the hammer or the anvil’, more applicable than to the relations of man and woman.”

Yet even Severin, the fictional father of Masochism, has crudely simplified human sexuality and social interaction into clear-cut notions of hammer and anvil, dominance and submission. It is, perhaps, foolish of him. Power is never quite as easily defined. In a 1946 essay on “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell addressed Goethe’s famous quote and proved that things are always rather more complicated than they might seem: “In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about.”